Born there, made there, or simply unimaginable anywhere else. The five boroughs have produced an unreasonable number of them.
1Theodore RooseveltBorn on East 20th Street, he ran the city's police department before he ran the country.
2Alexander HamiltonThe immigrant lawyer who built the American financial system from lower Manhattan and is buried at Trinity Church.
3Jay-ZThe Marcy Houses rapper who turned a Brooklyn childhood into a catalogue and a business empire.
4Stan LeeThe Manhattan-born writer and editor who co-created most of the Marvel universe from a midtown office.
5Jane JacobsThe Greenwich Village writer whose fight against expressways changed how cities everywhere are planned.
6Martin ScorseseThe Little Italy director who spent a career filming the city's streets from the inside.
7Fiorello La GuardiaThe Depression-era mayor who rebuilt the city's infrastructure and read the funny papers on the radio during a strike.
8Andy WarholThe Factory artist who made New York the centre of the postwar art market.
9Walt WhitmanThe Brooklyn newspaperman whose Leaves of Grass gave the city and the country a voice.
10Ruth Bader GinsburgThe Brooklyn-born justice who argued her way through sex-discrimination law before joining the Supreme Court.
11Duke EllingtonThe bandleader whose Cotton Club residency and Harlem years defined the city's jazz age.
12Robert MosesThe master builder who gave the city its parkways and beaches and bulldozed neighbourhoods to do it.
13Jean-Michel BasquiatThe Brooklyn painter who went from tagging SAMO on downtown walls to the centre of the 1980s art world.
Comments 1
Born at 28 East 20th Street, he ran the city's police in the 1890s. Duke Ellington and Jay-Z are on the same thirteen without ever holding office: https://youpick.best/articles/theodore-roosevelt-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamAug 21
